Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

“Money means nothing to us. It’ll be more useful to you on the road. Now I’m off to bed.”

In some ways Sergio reminds me of Elio. The same control of himself and of everything around him. The same awkward determination. If I had to bet on anyone to survive all this, I’d bet on those two. If I had to trust anyone else with the children, it would be them.

Sergio walked a little way with us. He said he could help us avoid the main road by taking us a short cut through the forest, but I had the impression that what he really wanted was to disorientate us, to make it impossible for us to find the house again. When he took his leave he squeezed each one of us by the hand, after which we saw him retrace his steps and vanish into the forest. A little later we heard a rifle shot. He had told us he liked to hunt at some distance from the house so as not to attract attention to it with the sound of his gun. Bauschan was walking between my legs looking around cautiously. In the end I had to carry him in my arms so as not to trip over him. I had not done this for some time, and I became aware of how tough and elastic the skin under his gray-black coat had become. There is nothing left in him now of the puppy he was. He is like a flute cut from a cane. A strong hollow length of wood. Or one of those architectural creations of metal and glass I used to love so much.

Skirting an unknown small village, we heard the church clock strike four. The time corresponded with the light. Smoke was rising from a couple of chimneys but we did not go near them.

Following Sergio’s advice we have kept to the fields beside the road so as to be able to take refuge in the forest at the first sound of a car engine. In our bags we have cured meat, a bottle of coffee, and what’s left of our provisions. The sky is clearer than in recent days, though short gusts of cold wind hit us in the face and bring tears to our eyes. Despite the sunshine we have buttoned up our jackets and pulled scarves and caps from our pockets. Walking like this makes us sweat, but we can’t afford to risk falling ill.

This evening, after the children had gone to sleep, I talked at length to Sebastiano about Clara. While I talked he looked steadily into my eyes without nodding or shaking his head. When he saw I had finished, he lifted one of his great hands and laid it on my head. I felt my ankles and knees and my other joints stop hurting and melt with warmth.

Then he withdrew his hand and lay down under the cowhide he uses as a cloak by day and as a blanket at night, and his breathing told me almost at once that he was asleep. I settled a branch on the fire. A mass of sparks rose to skim the ceiling of the stall where we have taken refuge. Watching them fall back and go out, I ask myself whether I am being subjected to an act of purification. Or whether sentence has already been passed and a bizarre judge has placed the scaffold a long way from the cell.

A day of full sunlight. The snow has been thawing and we have had to leave the fields to walk on the road.

We had been walking on the asphalt for about an hour when a car appeared from nowhere. We were aware of it at the last moment and dived for cover as it rounded the corner behind us. The youth who was driving it looked at the clump of birches where we had thrown ourselves. He didn’t slow down and I’m not sure he saw us, but I can’t be sure he didn’t see us either. I got the impression of a painted face and blond hair. The car was a little urban two-seater painted yellow in an amateurish manner with flames on the hood. The bass notes of a stereo could be heard from behind its closed windows.

Afraid the youngster might come back, we left the road. I was pretty sure we weren’t far from the pass, but it was dark when we reached the hillside. A slice of moon lit the last stretch of the climb.

Where the road descends the hill into Liguria we found a hotel, a bar, a children’s summer camp, and a few houses, all these places abandoned. Even so it seemed risky to stop there for the night because anyone coming over the pass would be able to see or smell the smoke from our fire. Of course we could do without a fire, but we need to eat something hot and dry our shoes. So I told the children and Sebastiano to shelter from the wind, and I set off by myself along the crest of the hill where great revolving wind turbines stand. After a kilometer I came across a small building with two floors. I think it must have been a base for the installation engineers. On the ground floor it has a kitchen and a room with a computer and other instruments, and on the upper floor two small bedrooms.

I went back for the children and we settled in. We lit our fire in the most sheltered room, the laboratory, and Sebastiano went to look for wood. Some of the equipment seems to be in working order, and two red indicators go on and off intermittently on one of the consoles. We ate some cured meat and then, while the soup heated, I told the children the road would be downhill the next day and within two days we’d be at the sea. Lucia said she had been to A. on vacation with her mother. For a few minutes the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the chomping of Bauschan’s jaws.

“I want to go to Switzerland,” Alberto said.

He spoke with none of the usual arrogance; it was the voice of a terrified child I had not heard before.

“Perhaps we’ll be able to get there from France,” I answered.

He looked at me across the flames of the fire. It seemed to me his mind must still be working on one of those decisive questions I have only read about in books, never experienced in real life, like crossroads crucial to a man’s destiny. His eyes were gentle and full of grace; for the first time, they were like Lucia’s eyes. Then suddenly his mouth hardened and he looked away. I understood he had made his choice.

When everyone was asleep I went out to urinate. Tonight the sky is covered with a thin gauze that magnifies the moonlight. The wind is cold but carries the smell of trees and of something unfolding.

I sat on a stone and searched the sky for some deficiency or excess that might explain what is happening. But the sky was the same as it always is, offering no signs. The powerful steel turbines were turning with a sound like enormous bicycles struggling uphill. I could see the red lights on their towers delineate the watershed between two valleys. I imagined this land after our own time, with the turbines still revolving and filling the silence with their powerful humming, cradling sleeping animals and driving them to mate as the sound of water does.

I am writing these last lines by the weak light of the dying fire. This act of writing that I had put behind me has returned to be part of me again, emerging from the dark place into which it had slipped. Before pulling my cover over me I kissed Lucia’s brow. I have a daughter, the night outside is deep and indifferent and everything seems destined to last longer than us. Yet I see beauty.

The snow has gone. The vegetation has changed. We haven’t yet seen the sea, but we’ve come across the first olives and can already feel the warm and pleasant wind rising from the coast. We walked all day at a good pace and after lunch allowed ourselves an hour’s sleep with our faces turned to the warm sun. There are no villages in the valley, only an occasional group of abandoned houses along the constant curves and hairpin bends of the winding road. No problems to report except that Bauschan has trodden on a tin can or a piece of broken glass and cut his paw. It was Lucia who told me he was limping and leaving bloodstains on the leaves. I disinfected the wound and tried to put a Band-Aid over it, but as soon as we began walking again it came off. I’ve tried a handkerchief, but he rips it with his teeth. This evening I repeated the medication. But it doesn’t seem to be anything serious. For the first time we’ve decided to sleep in the open. The marin , the wind rising from the sea, warms the air, and inside a ruin or other building it would be colder.